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She has lived there for the past two decades, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, which officially recognized her as the world’s oldest person after the death of French nun Lucille Rendon in January 2023 at the age of 118, focus.ua reports.
“Guinness World Records is saddened to learn that the oldest person in the world, Maria Brañas Morera (USA/Spain), died yesterday, August 19. Her death was confirmed by the Geriatric Research Group. She was the oldest person in the world at 117 years and 168 days. The eighth oldest person in the story (age verified),” reads the KRG’s Instagram account.
The long-lived woman’s passing was confirmed by her family.
They wrote on X: “Maria Branas has left us. She died the way she wanted: in her sleep, peacefully and without pain. We will always remember her advice and kindness.”
According to them, on the day she died, the old woman told her relatives that she felt weak and understood that her day was coming.
“One day I will no longer exist in this body, I don’t know, but it’s very close, and death will find me exhausted from living so long, but I hope it will find me smiling, free and content” – her family reported on her behalf, adding that she didn’t want anyone to cry for her, because she didn’t like tears.
Maria Branas’ Biography
Branas was born in California on March 4, 1907, a year after her parents immigrated from Spain to the United States. She spent the first few years of her life in San Francisco.
After living in Texas and New Orleans, the family decided to return to Catalonia in 1915, at the height of World War I. The journey across the ocean was dangerous, even tragic. And not only because of the German enemy ships patrolling the waterways. First, eight-year-old Marie fell from the upper deck to the lower deck while playing with her younger siblings, resulting in permanent hearing loss in one ear, and at the end of the voyage, her father died on board the ship from tuberculosis.
The family arrived and settled in Barcelona, then moved to the city of Banyoles in northeastern Catalonia.
In 1931, at the age of 24, Maria married Dr. Joan Moret. While the Spanish Civil War raged (1936-1939), Maria and her husband treated wounded soldiers, and after the war she continued to work as Joan’s assistant. During their marriage, the couple had three children, and as adults, they gave her 11 grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren.
In 1976, the woman became a widow, her son August died at the age of 86.
In 2020, Maria became the world’s oldest coronavirus survivor after recovering from COVID-19. Her record was later broken by Lucille Lunden. Despite surviving two world wars, the Spanish Civil War, the Spanish Flu pandemic, and COVID-19, this woman always remained kind and compassionate. She remained in good health, which intrigued scientists, who decided to study her phenomenon.
“No matter what, never, ever be a miserable person,” she said.
According to the American Gerontology Research Group, with Branyas’ death, the world’s oldest person became Japanese woman Tomiko Ituoka, who was born on May 23, 1908 and is now 116 years old.
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